im?" asked the guest.

"No, he is alone," was the reply.

Jerome related to his wife what he had learned from the landlord,
respecting the sick man, and the intelligence impressed her so strongly,
that she requested him to make further inquiries concerning the
stranger.

He therefore consulted the book in which guests usually register their
names, and, to his great surprise, found that the American's name was
Henry Linwood, and that he was from Richmond, Va.

It was with feelings of trepidation that Clotelle heard these
particulars from the lips of her husband.

"We must see this poor man, whoever he is," said she, as Jerome finished
the sentence.

The landlord was glad to hear that his guests felt some interest in the
sick man, and promised that the invalid's room should be got ready for
their reception.

The clock in the hall was just striking ten, as Jerome passed through
and entered the sick man's chamber. Stretched upon a mattress, with both
hands tightly bound to the bedstead, the friendless stranger was indeed
a pitiful sight. His dark, dishevelled hair prematurely gray, his long,
unshaven beard, and the wildness of the eyes which glanced upon them
as they opened the door and entered, caused the faint hope which had so
suddenly risen in Clotelle's heart, to sink, and she felt that this man
could claim no kindred with her. Certainly, he bore no resemblance to
the man whom she had called her father, and who had fondly dandled her
on his knee in those happy days of childhood.

"Help!" cried the poor man, as Jerome and his wife walked into the room.
His eyes glared, and shriek after shriek broke forth from his parched
and fevered lips.

"No, I did not kill my daughter!--I did not! she is not dead! Yes, she
is dead! but I did not kill her--poor girl! Look! that is she! No, it
cannot be! she cannot come here! it cannot be my poor Clotelle."

At the sound of her own name, coming from the maniac's lips, Clotelle
gasped for breath, and her husband saw that she had grown deadly pale.
It seemed evident to him that the man was either guilty of some terrible
act, or imagined himself to be. His eyeballs rolled in their sockets,
and his features showed that he was undergoing "the tortures of that
inward hell," which seemed to set his whole brain on fire. After
recovering her self-possession and strength, Clotelle approached the
bedside, and laid her soft hand upon the stranger's hot and fevered
brow.

One long, l